This, the second in a series of alternate Who albums, is a reconstruction
of the unreleased Who album Jigsaw Puzzle, which evolved into their 1966 album A
Quick One (or Happy Jack, depending on your continent).Originally intended to showcase each member
of The Who as a figurehead by allowing each to write their own half of an LP
side, the concept was scrapped due to a lack of quality material and was
rescued by Townshend’s seminal mini-rock opera “A Quick One While He’s Away”, which
replenished the scrapped material and occupied
the remaining LP side.This reconstruction
is all in its original mono—as early Who should!—and uses the best possible mastering
available.Unique mono mixes were made
of some songs which never received a proper vintage mono mix.

After the success of The Who’s singles “My Generation” and “Substitute”
that emphasized the songwriting talents of guitarist Pete Townshend, the public
greatly anticipated the band’s sophomore album.In June 1966, The Who recorded a trio of solid tracks for the follow-up
single to “Substitute”: “Disguises”, “I’m A Boy” and the John Entwhistle/Keith
Moon collaboration “In The City."Although “Disguises” was originally earmarked for single release, its position
was overpowered by “I’m A Boy”, the best and probably most idiosyncratic song
The Who had in their repertoire at this point.Originally written as part of a scrapped rock opera called Quads, “I’m a
Boy” told the story of a boy whose parents wished he was a girl, and was performed
with a dramatic power-pop arrangement that only The Who could muster.It turned out to be their highest-charting
single to date, and The Who began to collect original compositions for an album
while simultaneously recording non-original compositions in August destined for
their live residency on the Ready Steady Go!program (“Barbara Anne”, “Man With The Money”, “Batman” and “Heatwave”).

But Townshend wasn’t alone in the strive to compose original
material; manager Kit Lambert (who had asserted himself also as The Who’s
producer) secured a new publishing deal that could make the whole band a bit of
cash, but the other members were required to write at least two songs
each.Taking Kit’s request to heart, the
Jigsaw Puzzle album was originally conceived as a way to exploit this
publishing deal by prominently featuring each member of The Who as a lead
songwriter, thus making a virtual four-part solo album in which each member of
The Who received their half of an LP-side (a concept later revisited in 1973
for the Quadrophenia album).

Recording at IBA, Pye and CBS studios at the tail end of
September and the first week of October, The Who tracked just under an album’s
worth of material for Jigsaw Puzzle with the four-part-solo-album concept in
mind.Townshend offered his own “Don’t
Look Away”, “Run Run Run” (a song he had originally given to the band The Cat)
and “So Sad About Us” (a song he had originally given to The Mercies); lively
Keith Moon contributed his snide snub of John Lennon “I Need You” and the instrumental
“Showbiz Sonata” (later retitled “Cobwebs and Strange”); stoic John Entwhistle contributed
his own compositions “Whiskey Man” and the now-classic “Boris The Spider”; and Roger
Daltrey’s sole contribution was his “See My Way.”The Who also recorded a new, longer and more
elaborate version of “I’m A Boy” intended for Jigsaw Puzzle, as well as a cover
of “Bucket T” and a new version of “My Generation” coupled with “Land of Hope
and Glory”, again both intended for both Ready Steady Go! and it’s accompanying
soundtrack EP, Ready Steady Who!

By November 1966 the official announcement was made of Jigsaw
Puzzle’s release on December 1st.The official tracklist was as follows… Side A: I’m A Boy / Run Run Run /
Don’t Look Away / Circles / I Need You / Showbiz Sonata.Side B: In The City / Boris The Spider /
Whiskey Man / See My Way / Heat Wave / Barbara Ann.The problem occurred when astute fans notice
a majority of the album had already been heard before: Both “I’m A Boy” and “Circles”
had been an A-side and B-side respectively; “Run Run Run” had already been
covered by The Cat; “In The City” had already appeared as the B-side to “I’m A Boy”;
“Barbara Ann” was already released on the Ready Steady Who EP that same
month!Of the twelve album tracks, half
of them were nowhere near being new.

The Who must have been wise to this fact and that month the
album was completely restructured.Returning
to the studio in the midst of touring, the band cut their next single, “Happy Jack”
b/w “I’ve Been Away.”They also cut a
song meant to replace the redundant Jigsaw tracks, a song so quintessentially The
Who in this period that it could only become the title track of this new, reborn
album.It was a nine-minute epic that
functioned as a mini-rock opera, a collection of suites that formed a narrative
about infidelity and reconciliation: “A Quick One While He’s Away.”Using this as well as their fine rendition of
“So Sad About Us” from October and a cover of “Heatwave” from their August
Ready Steady Who sessions to replace “I’m A Boy”, “Circles”, “In The City” and “Barbara
Ann”, a completely new album emerged: A Quick One (although “Heatwave” was
replaced with “Happy Jack” in America, and instead being used as the album’s title
track).Although A Quick One became The
Who’s sound-defining album of the 60s that initiated the creative trajectory of
the band’s entire career, are we able to reassemble this jigsaw puzzle?

The first step is source material.It is very relevant that A Quick One signaled
the beginning of Kit Lambert as an active producer of the band and the effects
of this are immediate.Although Lambert
was a fine manager, music promoter and possibly even filmmaker, he was an awful
record producer and the sound quality of A Quick One often sounds inconsistent,
moving in and out of clarity.After A/B’ing
numerous masters and needledrops of A Quick One, I have determined that this is
just simply how the album sounds, and no mastering of the album will fix “Run
Run Run”.Perhaps it was supposed to
sound like garbage?I have also
determined that the very best master of the album is the latest HDtracks 2014
remaster, which features the most rich and robust sound and is often the most pristine,
considering the sound of the album.

The track order is an easy task, as The Who published Jigsaw
Puzzle’s initial tracklisting and the songs are all readily available to
reconstruct the album.While at first it
appears to be a fairly random assortment of songs The Who just simply had
finished at the time, a closer inspection will reveal it’s organization: that Side
A are all Townshend and Moon compositions and Side B are all Entwhistle and
Daltrey compositions (note that since Daltrey’s original vision of The Who were
as interpreters of cover songs, the two covers of “Heatwave” and “Barbara Ann”
are included within his section of the album).In attempt to create a conceptual continuity within this series of alternate
Who albums, we will replace “Heatwave” since it was already featured on my previous
reconstruction Introducing The Who.Its replacement
will be a different cover song: The Everly Brothers’ “Man With The Money” since
it featured a fairly elaborate, album-worthy arrangement, not to mention Entwhistle had specifically
stated in an April 1966 article that an Everly Brothers song was intended
for their second album!

As with my previous Who reconstruction Introducing The Who,
we will only use the song’s original mono mixes, as that was the way they were
intended to be mixed as; any listen to the awkward stereo mixes will tell you!That is an easy task for all but the long
October version of “I’m A Boy”, which only has been released as a modern stereo
mix.Luckily, the stereo mix featured
elements prominently hard-panned left or right, so in splitting the left and
right channels and mixing them separately I was able to create a mono mix that fit the rest of the album, specifically using “I Need You" (which seemed to feature a
similar instrumental arrangement) as a reference.Likewise,
a mono mix of “Man With The Money” has not been released, so we collapse the
stereo and rebuild a monophonic mix using “Don’t Look Away” as a
reference.

How does this jigsaw puzzle compare to a quick one?As with the previous Who alternate album,
this listener enjoys it much more!It is
surely missing a quintessential Who track, but I personally don’t believe they’d
truly ‘nail’ the title track anyways until at least their 1968 performance of “A Quick
One While He’s Away” on the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, not to mention
the penultimate version featured on 1970’s Live At Leeds.In that case it is a welcomed trade for this superb
version of “I’m A Boy”, as well as “Circles” and “In The City”—smaller trees in
The Who’s forest they might be, but the pair improve the atmosphere and create
a slightly more horn-driven sound.And although
we lose the fantastic “So Sad About Us”, we have a more well-rounded album as a
whole.So what is next for The Who?Maybe a better question to ask is... who’s Lily?